Whitepaper
Most clean-energy projects don't fail because the technology doesn't work. They fail — or stall for months — because a feasibility fact that was knowable on day one surfaced on day ninety: a circuit with no export headroom, a service that forces expensive primary metering, an AHJ with a fire-code requirement nobody priced, an incentive whose adder the site never qualified for.
The good news is that the questions that decide a project are remarkably consistent across asset types. Whether you're siting a DC fast-charging hub, a commercial rooftop, a standalone battery, a behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage system, or a full microgrid, the same five questions determine whether it pencils and what it takes to build. This paper lays out that framework and shows how each question can be answered early — from public data, before you spend real money.
Done by hand, an apples-to-apples first look means pulling the right commercial tariff, finding the utility's hosting-capacity map, reading the electric-service requirements manual for metering rules, checking the jurisdiction's adopted code cycle and fire requirements, and working through the current incentive eligibility. It's a few hours of scattered, easy-to-get-wrong work per site — and it rarely gets done consistently across a pipeline.
The cost of skipping it is asymmetric. A weak site that looks fine on a spreadsheet can absorb months of development spend before a fatal flaw appears. A strong site that screens poorly because of one conservative assumption can get dropped. Consistent early screening doesn't replace real engineering or utility studies — it tells you which sites deserve them.
Every project's economics start with the value of a kilowatt-hour at this specific meter: the commercial tariff's energy, demand and fixed charges for a load; the net-metering or net-billing regime and any PPA / avoided-cost value for generation; session economics for charging.
For anything that exports — solar, storage, V2G — the local circuit's hosting capacity governs how much you can interconnect before upgrades are likely triggered. Headroom varies block to block.
The service and metering design — metering sequence, CT location, dedicated termination, and whether the load forces secondary (LV) or primary (MV) metering — drives a large share of switchgear cost and schedule, and most of it is specified in the utility's requirements manual.
The Authority Having Jurisdiction sets the adopted code cycle, plan-review and inspection path, accessibility requirements, and — critically for storage — the fire code. These vary by jurisdiction and change on cycles.
The federal investment tax credit and its adders — energy community, domestic content, low-income, prevailing-wage / apprenticeship — plus state and utility programs can swing project returns more than almost any design choice. But the adders have eligibility tests a given site may or may not pass.
The five questions become a decision when you do three things with the answers. First, separate the economic questions (1, 5) from the buildability questions (2, 3, 4): a site can pencil and still be hard to build, or vice-versa. Second, attach a confidence level to each answer — deep, validated data earns more weight than a standard framework that needs verification. Third, stamp each input with the date its source was last verified, and re-check anything past its natural cadence (codes shift annually; tariffs, fees and programs more often). A go / no-go built on undated, uniform-confidence inputs is a guess wearing a number.
The five questions are universal, but their relative weight shifts with the asset. Use this as a quick lens for where to look hardest:
| Asset type | Weighs hardest on | Often the silent killer |
|---|---|---|
| EV fast-charging | Service & metering (3); cost of power / demand charges (1) | Service upgrade & demand charges |
| C&I solar | Hosting capacity (2); cost of power offset (1); incentives (5) | Export headroom & NEM regime |
| Standalone storage | Interconnection (2,3); incentives (5) | Fire code & interconnection cost |
| Behind-the-meter solar+storage | Cost of power (1); incentives (5); permitting (4) | Tariff / demand-charge assumptions |
| Microgrid | All five — plus resilience / critical-load design | Controls, code & interconnection complexity |
A note on scope. Early screening is a filter, not a final answer. It tells you which sites merit a utility study, a stamped engineering design, and real underwriting — and surfaces the questions to ask first. It is not a utility commitment, an engineering deliverable, or legal, tax, or financial advice. Confirm site-specific items with the utility, the AHJ, and your advisors.
SiteLitmus was built around exactly this framework. From a single address it runs all five questions, returns each answer with a confidence score and an "as of" date, and — for the buildability side — produces a preliminary, engineering-grade single-line a licensed PE can finalize and stamp. The methodology and public sources behind every number are documented on the methodology page.
This paper is for general informational purposes and describes a screening methodology built on publicly available data. Estimates are for early due-diligence and are not a utility commitment, engineering deliverable, or legal, tax, or financial advice. © SiteLitmus. See the methodology & data sources.